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Monday, 28 December 2015

Christmas in the Netherlands is two days, not one, called "First-" and "Second Christmas Day." They have equal importance, though church services are only on "First Christmas Day" (25th December) and Christmas Eve. This means that you can see your family on one day and your in-laws on the other day. The same happens at Easter and Pentecost.

Emma and Ronald

The main difference between Dutch and English Christmas is gift-giving. In the Netherlands, gifts are traditionally exchanged on Sinterklaas, the evening of 5th December. A gift is accompanied by a personalised rhyming poem, and it is traditionally wrapped to look as if it is something else. The focus is on children, but adults exchange gifts as well, generally as a "secret santa" so that, within a family, you only have to buy a gift and write a poem for one other family member.

Sinterklaas, or "Sint Niklaas" - Saint Nicolas, is the basis of our Father Christmas. Apparently, when the Dutch and English lived in the US, the English became jealous of the Sinterklaas tradition, and so Father Christmas, or "Santa Claus" (sounds like "Sint Niklaas") was created.

All this means that the Dutch Christmas does not centre around gift-giving or Father Christmas, since all this happens earlier in the month. This leaves Christmas free to be a pleasant holiday with an optional religious element, and a strong focus on family.

There is no traditional Christmas dinner: indeed, "Christmas Dinner" to the Dutch generally means English turkey roast. However, there are some typical dishes. In strictly-puritan Katwijk, they eat pork filet in a creamy sauce. Many families eat game, in particular jugged-hare. A more recent tradition is "gourmetten," where you sit at the table with a special grill pan and grill your own meat and fish. (I'm not sure what this is called in English, but I've seen the sets for sale in Lidl so we must have it). In general, the aim is to sit at the table together as long as possible, so meals tend to consist of several small, luxurious courses and not one huge roast.

Although there are no set menus, there are some traditional Christmas sweets. There are little chocolate wreaths, sprinkled with hundreds and thousands and filled with fondant, chocolate holly leaves, and "Duivekater," a sweet white bread which resembles brioche.

Emma and myself rehearsing in Leiden October 2104

For me, as an English girl living in Holland, Christmas seemed a bit of an anticlimax at first. However, I have come to enjoy it and even prefer it. There is no last-minute shopping, no fighting for the turkeys in the supermarket, no manic gift-buying and wrapping, no compulsory over-eating and drinking... It is more like the English Easter: a quiet day off.

And what did I cook for my in-laws? Since they're not strict puritans, I chose game.

They left at around 22:00 and Ronald and I went for a short walk. The streets were quiet, and through the uncurtained windows we could see families sitting round tables in various stages of their meals. It was very cosy.

I would like you to think that it was a calm, quiet family Christmas. But that would be a little lie. For there was one chaotic element: my five-month old kitten. She wanted to try everything. She even stole a raw scallop which we extracted from her and threw away. And, poor thing, when she tried to explore on the table itself, she singed her whiskers in a candle flame before we could grab her.

Naughty kitten

Still, it was a wonderful day, and I would really recommend Christmas in Holland. Lots of love xx M and Ronald.

I am sometimes not able to find the time to read other people's blogs as much as I would like to and today (realising I had nothing from my beloved France in terms of the recent European Christmas dinners blogposts) I found Ken Broadhurst's delightful festive posts from the Loire on my listings.

Here are a list of my favourite December 2015 blogposts from him. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have. Phil x

Saturday, 26 December 2015

“Hi Phil, sorry we
have no pictures of the meals but I was so busy with meeting with my
family and my godson. However, I will try to describe it for you." Lena and Sascha xx Fondest greetings from Karlsruhe!!!!

"Lieber Phil, on Christmas Eve my mum
made duck with red cabbage and dumplings – this is a very typical
Christmas dinner in our part of Germany. Traditionally we would have it with
Spätzle
and Rotkohl as I have already described. The duck is spiced with salt, pepper and sometimes
paprika. The whole meal can also be served with mashed potatoes,
asparagus and green beans too. It is especially nice to find baked apple sauce around the pork. Lecker!!!

Yesterday my boyfriend
Sascha made almost the same as you made in England!!!! This is a special roast
that is called Rollbraten in German. With it we had potatoes, mit Bratensoße (delicious roast gravy) fresh
vegetables and a sauce of green pepper.

Typisches Rollbraten.

All the best to you for
Christmas and we very much look forward to seeing you in May 2016!

Later last night my German friend Thorsten Feldmann from the Rheinland Palatinate sent me some more pictures and information about a meal for eight that his father had put together for their evening repast on Christmas Day. You would think that they were already stodged from the lamb lunch aber gar nicht! But not at all!

"Hi Phil! Here is the evening meal cooked by my Father.

To start, carrot ginger soup and a
variety of four salads. For the main, stuffed pork cheeks with a broad variety of
roast vegetables including Brussels sprouts, carrots and cauliflower. By the way, although we already full from the lamb at lunchtime the stuffed pigs cheeks (that you thought were chicken!) are
for eight hungry people. Cheese sauce and gravy (jus) are added to finish the dish.
For dessert we have marscapone cream and raspberries. We will sleep well tonight!"

Friday, 25 December 2015

This time I asked my friend and very talented artist Cheryl De Los Reyes Cruz, who is based in Argentina, how she had so far celebrated Christmas and I was fascinated to hear of a food based event on Christmas Eve that she had enjoyed before the promise of huge Christmas day lunch today.

Cheryl (left)

The event depicted through these photographs (below) took place in the barrio called Nunez in Buenos Aires around 10pm on Christmas Eve. She was with her friend Andrea Toledo and her family. Her uncle is a chef and Cheryl told me that he prepared some really amazing dishes. There was octopus salad, shrimp salad, tongue, a pineapple salad and roasted pork with prune stuffing. She enjoyed plenty of wine and champagne and loved listening to others performing Karaoke but (laughing) insisted that she didn't perform herself! The dessert was a lemon mouse with dulce de leche.More fascinating detail sent to me midday on Boxing Day. Copying the spelling correctly took some doing! Thanks Cheryl.
"Hey Phil, just to let you know and for more authentic detail : the octopus
salad is called Pulpo al Olivo (Peruvian), shrimp salad is Coctel de
Camarones. The pork dish is called Carre de Cerdo Mechado con
Curuelas. Chips de Batatas y Guarnacion de Peras Cebollas Confitadas.
The dessert is Mousse de Maracuya con Mereings y Salsa Toffee.The chef's name is
Jorge Sanchez."

This lovely and aromatic Christmas dinner comes direct from my friend Thorsten Feldmann's family dinner in Germany's Rheinland Palatinate - a place called Offenbach an der Queich.

The 4kg of leg of Turkish Kosher lamb was marinated in olive oil and spices for one week before cooking. This was with sweet pepper, thyme, parsley, curry powder and salt. It was cooked for two hours at 175 degrees centigrade after a quick roast in the pan.

Similar to last year I am hoping to bring in some European Christmas dinners to the pages of this blog from friends in Germany and Holland and maybe France. But first I will start by wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and thank you all for continuing to read my food based blog. As always it is a pleasure for me to share my passions for food with you.

I got up about 8.30am today after crawling off to bed around 10pm last night. I had been at work until 7pm and by the time I got home it was around 8pm. I was lucky with trams and bus. At least I remembered to take my joint of beef rib roast out of the freezer before I went to sleep. Likewise a bag of Heston Blumental chicken stock that I had stored at the back of the freezer since August 2014! I knew it would come in handy one day.

Something nice happened on the way home from work too. I popped in to the local Sainsbury's Local store in the village and, quite by surprise, the manager there gave me a bottle of Prosecco as a Christmas gift!

Back to today. The rib roast is in the oven to cook for four hours on a low heat. I had added some spices to the cooking water for extra flavour - basil leaves - star anise - cinnamon bark and cloves inserted into the top of the joint. Later in the day I will be adding some small onions for even more flavour. The veg will be new potatoes, carrot and broccoli spears.

Given that I never had the inclination to cook myself a meal last night I was quite hungry this morning and made myself a fry up with the local butcher's Lincolnshire sausages, three rashers of smoked bacon and a fried egg with a wadge of chutney on the side. As a treat I also had some smoked salmon with fresh lemon juice and a crunch of black pepper.

Michael Ball's Christmas cd is on the stereo and I have cracked open my first beer. More blog posts to come...

Wednesday, 23 December 2015

Today marks two days before I break up for the Christmas holidays at Tesco ( I have Christmas Day and Boxing day off) and my male work colleagues Paul, Alan and I have been hard at it selling lots of whole salmon, a few carp, various other fish and plenty of half price meat offers. The day has gone by quickly and due to our fun and banter together the whole experience has been rather fun. Plus - making the customers happy through our helpfulness, finely honed knife skills, combined knowledge and professionalism adds to an overall very satisfactory experience.

Paul, Phil and Alan,

This is the fifth year working on the Tesco counters for myself and 2016 may well bring in some major work changes for me as I direct my working life towards writing for and promoting things theatrical in the East Midlands rather than working for a large supermarket corporation. My time at Tesco has mainly been enjoyable but has also been disappointing sometimes in fulfilling my original (perhaps naïve) foodie expectations of working alongside a group of like-minded individuals. Perhaps I am exceptional and didn't ever realise it until later down the line.

Although I have always endeavoured to promote myself as a knowledgeable professional on the meat and fish counters my focus of interest has, of late, increasingly veered towards the theatrical arts and my constant reviewing and theatre writing activities outside of work. Setting up www.eastmidlandstheatre.com in mid October 2015 has furthered my desire to change and follow an entirely different route workwise. Saying that I will always continue to use this blog as a forum to promote my lifelong love of food.

Fresh Scottish Salmon

Kissing Carp

I know that recently I have neglected this blog somewhat in terms of regular content but it is only because I have felt this urgent need to promote my new website and that takes time and lot of effort extra to the 36.5 hrs I work at Tesco plus ten hours a week travelling time. It has been like doing two jobs and at times exhausting. However, every minute spent working and writing for EMT and also for Sardines magazine and reviewing for the Nottingham Post newspaper has been worth it. My two days off each week have been dedicated to pushing myself to add interesting content to the theatre website.

As a friend recently said "You must be constantly at it!" This is true but I believe that no-one else is going to do this writing work for me and to be honest although the actual job of reviewing a play, after returning home from the experience, takes me into the past midnight early hours - sometimes after being on the go at Tesco since 7.30am - I feel tremendous pleasure from doing a good professional writing job to support the production and the theatre involved.

Another time related quote may well be appropriate as I ease myself into full-time dedication to developing EMT and that is the old adage about retirement. "Eee since I retired I don't know how I ever had time for work!" Well, this ambition ain't exactly retirement - quite the opposite - but I hope that the actuality of the proposed new working environment, to be, is equally as fulfilling!

Tuesday, 1 December 2015

Back in 2003 I used to
contribute to the Derby Evening Telegraph Bygones section and enjoyed
recalling my youthful times in the world of Derby's then prevalent
butcher's shops (1970s and 1980s) and of my scouting years and other
such nostalgia. Today's post comes not from me but from a piece that
I kept from one of their Bygones sections in 2003 written by the late
June Pearson of Fenny Bentley in Derbyshire.

June Pearson in the 1950s

I never knew June
directly but we had a connection in that she worked in a small corner
shop on the top of Cardigan Street in Chaddesden Derby. As a child I
would often pop into its enticing environs with my granny Hampson to
shop for a few items and June's eloquent and detailed writings struck
a chord with me. Today I spoke to Jane Goddard of the Derby Evening
Telegraph and was then able to get in touch with June's surviving
husband Ken who gave me permission to use June's most excellent
material.

Mr Fred Hanson and wife Ida (my granny) and my dad and mam.

My mother Marjorie Ethel Lowe.

What interested me the
most was the detail of the things that were sold in the shop in the
1950s and her practices in working at the shop. All quite different
from today's shopping experiences. Over to June...

“I worked at Mrs
Jenning's corner shop as a shop assistant in 1957 and remember Philip
Lowe's Grandmother as a customer as well as two of her daughters
(Marjorie and Barbara) who came into the shop on errands for their
mam. I also got to know many other people who were customers at
the shop. My own mother traded at the shop and was well looked after
during the war.

Part interior of a typical corner shop in the UK circa 1950.

Mr and Mrs Jenning's
shop and house were built around 1935 before the vast Chaddesden
housing estate was completed. It stood on the brow of the steep part
of Cardigan Street, between Hillcrest Road and Cowsley Road.
Previously they had had a greengrocery round and a Fish and Chip shop
in the Cowsley Road area. In my humble opinion the Fish and Chip shop
sold the best fish and chips in Derby. Mrs Jennings sister, Effie
Wilkes and her husband owned this shop. Harry Wilkes also played in
goal for Derby County in the 1930s.

In 1951 Mr Jennings
died aged only 49 but Mrs Jennings carried on running the business
with the help of her sister Ivy who lived in Repton. In addition to
Ivy, Madge Johnson, who lived on Hillcrest Road, worked at the shop
four mornings a week. Mrs King from Cardigan Street and Mrs Kitchen
cleaned the shop every evening after it had closed.

Another girl I remember
was Poppy Martin who was there before me and I gather was quite a
favourite with everyone. My own working hours were 8.30am to 6pm
Monday to Saturday with half day closing on Tuesdays at 1pm.

Monday and Tuesday
mornings were spent re-stocking the shelves and cleaning. This was
done with a smear of Mansion Polish and plenty of what they used to
call 'elbow grease'. Most of the shelves in the shop were made of
polished wood and there was also a rather nice glass fronted cabinet
in which were kept numerous ointments and patent medicines.

Another corner shop in the 1950s

A double row of small
wooden drawers running along the back wall of the shop contained
nutmegs, drums of pepper, bundles of elastic, darning wool, safety
pins, sewing needles, cards of buttons, boxes of Top Mill snuff and
numerous other objects essential to living at the time. Many women
would be adept at knitting and sewing and made their own clothes from
popular patterns.

Wednesdays were spent
making up orders for delivery on Thursdays and Fridays. Mrs Jennings
delivered the orders in her car which was a Wolseley 15/60. I also
remember her having a Jowett 10 and, occasionally, she would give me
a lift home from school when she collected her son Geoff. It was a
rare treat in those days. And she was a woman driver – a much
derided species in those days, but she was always safe and followed
the rules of driving to the letter.

On Friday afternoon Mrs
Jennings would bank the week's takings in Derby. She was always in a
tearing hurry to reach the bank before 3.30pm and I often remember
(with amusement now) her going off to Derby in her slippers!

British currency circa 1950s.

During the week there
would be a steady flow of travelling salesmen coming into the shop.
Each of them would be hoping for an order, of course. We had regular
ones who supplied us with sides of bacon, ham, butter, lard, sugar
and cheese. Cheshire's of Derby and the Ceylon Tea Company were our
main suppliers and at least six companies supplied biscuits. Some
biscuits were sold in packets and some sold loose in half pounds and
pounds. A half pound of biscuits would contain mostly plain plus one
chocolate and one wafer biscuit, whereas a pound would include three
chocolate and three wafers.

When a new product was
being launched we would be given free samples. Soap, toothpaste and
shampoo were always welcome and, when Knorr soups were introduced we
were given soup from a flask to sample! Very nice it was too! We also sold a lot of Campbell's and Heinz tinned soup - the rich tomato and the chicken soups were the most popular as well as oxtail - even in the summer!

Vinegar was sold from a
barrel which was kept in a yard at the side of the shop along with
soap powders, bottles of Chlorus, crates of pop and cleaning aids.

Goodalls of Derby
supplied us with pork sausages and pies. Johnstone's greengrocery
wholesalers supplied us with potatoes, carrots and onions. Nothing got wasted as we always sold out.

Christmas was always a
busy time and the customers would spend money saved through the year
in a Jennings' Christmas Club account. Ivy would decorate the shop
top shelf with Cadbury's picture box chocolates, large tins of pears,
peaches and apricots, tins of salmon and Nestle's cream. We would
take orders for pork pies, ham, Christmas puddings, selection boxes
and trifles. On Christmas Day Mrs Jennings would open the shop at tea
time – for an hour – to sell ice cream. Back then (1950s) fridges
and freezers were still a luxury in most homes.

Mrs Jennings had a
daughter called Cynthia who was a school teacher. Her son Geoff's
great love was motorbikes and most things that were noisy. On Bonfire
night he always had lots of fireworks and loved everyone to enjoy
them with him. He also had a very long sledge on which, when it
snowed, as it frequently did in those days, Geoff loved giving the
local kids a death-defying ride down the steep Cardigan Street to
Kerry Street at the bottom. Sometimes a few of us would fall off on
the way but nobody seemed to mind. It was all great innocent fun. We
really had a good time and frequently went home with hot aches and
chilblains. Cardigan Street was always known locally as Jenning's
Hill!

In the 1950s having a
telephone at home was quite a luxury and Mrs Jennings would often be
called upon to phone for the doctor or to pass messages on to the
nearby neighbours. My brother John, who was in the Royal Engineers
serving in Germany in the 1950s, used to ring through to the shop to
let us know he was coming home on leave. I then had to tell his
girlfriend Gill to let her know.

In 1962 I left Jennings
and settled into another area and didn't visit the shop for a long
time but I was called upon to manage the shop one more time when
Richard, Mrs Jennings' step-son got married. When Mrs Jennings (now
Crocker) decided to retire in the late 1960s she offered the shop to
my husband Ken and myself. Although it was a tempting offer we
declined as we were happily settled in another area.

The years in Cardigan
Street were very happy and neighbours would always give a helping
hand when needed. Our immediate neighbours were Mrs Blanche and Mrs
Fenner who were both very supportive to my mother during the war when
my dad was serving in North Africa. I had four elder brothers who
must have been quite a handful with my dad being absent from home. I
have heard lots of tales of the things they got up to during the war
but I am sure it was all harmless fun.

I haven't visited
Cardigan Street for many years and, no doubt, I would see many
changes now. Who knows – I may visit those old haunts once again
one day.

June Pearson (née
Redfern)

Article originally
published by Derby Evening Telegraph Bygones 29th July
2003. Re-published and edited with their kind permission and the permission of Ken
Pearson.

Welcome to my food blog

Welcome to my blog. I love writing with humour and real interest about my passions of food. Of late I have got a real passion for the food of The Netherlands and Germany but have never lost my real passion for the food of France. Just get me in front of a French butcher's counter or a quality fish market and I am the happiest man on earth.

Phil Lowe. March 2016.

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